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The Caucasian Albanian script was an
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letter (alphabet), letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character ...
ic writing system used by the
Caucasian Albania Caucasian Albania is a modern exonym for a former state located in ancient times in the Caucasus: mostly in what is now Azerbaijan (where both of its capitals were located). The modern endonyms for the area are ''Aghwank'' and ''Aluank'', among ...
ns, one of the ancient Northeast Caucasian peoples whose territory comprised parts of the present-day
Republic of Azerbaijan A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th ...
and Dagestan. It was used to write the
Caucasian Albanian language Caucasian Albanian (also called Old Udi, Aluan or Aghwan) is an extinct member of the Northeast Caucasian languages. It was spoken in Caucasian Albania, which stretched from current day south Dagestan to Azerbaijan. Linguists believe it is an ea ...
and was one of only two native scripts ever developed for speakers of an indigenous
Caucasian language The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Linguistic comparison allows ...
(i.e., a language that has no genealogical relationship to other languages outside the Caucasus), the other being the Georgian scripts. The
Armenian language Armenian ( classical: , reformed: , , ) is an Indo-European language and an independent branch of that family of languages. It is the official language of Armenia. Historically spoken in the Armenian Highlands, today Armenian is widely spoken t ...
, the third language of the Caucasus with its own native script, is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family.


History

According to
Movses Kaghankatvatsi Movses Kaghankatvatsi ( hy, Մովսէս Կաղանկատուացի ''Movses Kaġankatvac’i''), or Movses Daskhurantsi ( ''Movses Dasxuranc’i'') is the reputed author (or authors) of a tenth-century Classical Armenian historiographical work on C ...
, the Caucasian Albanian script was created by
Mesrop Mashtots Mesrob or Mesrop ( hy, Մեսրոպ) is an Armenian given name. Mesrob / Mesrop may refer to: * Mesrop Mashtots, also Saint Mesrop, Armenian monk, theologian and linguist. Inventor of the Armenian alphabet ** Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient M ...
, the Armenian monk,
theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the s ...
and translator who is also credited with creating the
Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
and—by some scholars—the Georgian scripts.''
Donald Rayfield Patrick Donald Rayfield OBE (born 12 February 1942, Oxford) is an English academic and Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary University of London. He is an author of books about Russian and Georgian literature, and about ...
"''The Literature of Georgia: A History (Caucasus World). RoutledgeCurzon. . P. 19. "''The Georgian alphabet seems unlikely to have a pre-Christian origin, for the major archaeological monument of the first century 4IX the bilingual Armazi gravestone commemorating Serafua, daughter of the Georgian viceroy of Mtskheta, is inscribed in Greek and Aramaic only. It has been believed, and not only in Armenia, that all the Caucasian alphabets — Armenian, Georgian and Caucaso-Albanian — were invented in the fourth century by the Armenian scholar Mesrop Mashtots.<...> The Georgian chronicles The Life of Kanli – assert that a Georgian script was invented two centuries before Christ, an assertion unsupported by archaeology. There is a possibility that the Georgians, like many minor nations of the area, wrote in a foreign language — Persian, Aramaic, or Greek — and translated back as they read.''"
Koriun Koriun ( hy, Կորիւն, reformed spelling: Կորյուն; also transliterated as ''Koriwn'', ''Koryun'') was the earliest Armenian-language author. Writing in the fifth century, his ''Life of Mashtots'' contains many details about the evangel ...
, a pupil of Mesrop Mashtots, in his book ''The Life of Mashtots'', wrote about the circumstances of its creation:
Then there came and visited them an elderly man, an Albanian named Benjamin. And he, Mesrop Mashtots, inquired and examined the barbaric diction of the Albanian language, and then through his usual God-given keenness of mind invented an alphabet, which he, through the grace of Christ, successfully organized and put in order.
The alphabet was in use from its creation in the early 5th century through the 12th century, and was used not only formally by the
Church of Caucasian Albania The Church of Albania or the Albanian Apostolic Church was an ancient, briefly autocephalous church established in the 5th century. Igor KuznetsoUdis/ref> In 705, It fell under the religious jurisdiction of the Armenian Apostolic Church as the Cat ...
, but also for secular purposes.


Rediscovery

Although mentioned in early sources, no examples of it were known to exist until its rediscovery in 1937 by a Georgian scholar, Professor Ilia Abuladze, in
Matenadaran The Matenadaran ( hy, Մատենադարան), officially the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, is a museum, repository of manuscripts, and a research institute in Yerevan, Armenia. It is the world's largest repository of Armenia ...
MS No. 7117, a manual from the 15th century. This manual presents different alphabets for comparison:
Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
, Greek, Latin,
Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages ...
, Georgian,
Coptic Coptic may refer to: Afro-Asia * Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya * Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century * Coptic alphabet, t ...
, and Caucasian Albanian among them. Between 1947 and 1952, archaeological excavations at
Mingachevir Mingachevir ( az, Mingəçevir ) is the fourth-largest city in Azerbaijan with a population of about 106,000. It's often called the "city of lights" because of its hydroelectric power station on the Kur River, which divides the city down the mid ...
under the guidance of S. Kaziev found a number of artifacts with Caucasian Albanian writing — a stone altar post with an inscription around its border that consisted of 70 letters, and another 6 artifacts with brief texts (containing from 5 to 50 letters), including candlesticks, a tile fragment, and a vessel fragment. The first literary work in the Caucasian Albanian alphabet was discovered on a palimpsest in
Saint Catherine's Monastery Saint Catherine's Monastery ( ar, دير القدّيسة كاترين; grc-gre, Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης), officially the Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Katherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai, ...
on
Mount Sinai Mount Sinai ( he , הר סיני ''Har Sinai''; Aramaic: ܛܘܪܐ ܕܣܝܢܝ ''Ṭūrāʾ Dsyny''), traditionally known as Jabal Musa ( ar, جَبَل مُوسَىٰ, translation: Mount Moses), is a mountain on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. It is ...
in 2003 by Dr.
Zaza Aleksidze Zaza Aleksidze (, also transliterated as Zaza Alexidze; 18 October 1935 – 24 January 2023) was a Georgian historian and linguist who specialized in Armenian and Oriental studies. He is best known internationally for deciphering the Caucasian ...
; it is a fragmentary
lectionary A lectionary ( la, lectionarium) is a book or listing that contains a collection of scripture readings appointed for Christian or Judaic worship on a given day or occasion. There are sub-types such as a "gospel lectionary" or evangeliary, and ...
dating to the late 4th or early 5th century AD, containing verses from
2 Corinthians 11 2 Corinthians 11 is the eleventh chapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is authored by Paul the Apostle and Timothy ( 2 Corinthians 1:1) in Macedonia in 55–56 CE. According to the ...
, with a Georgian Patericon written over it.
Jost Gippert Jost Gippert (; born 12 March 1956 in Winz-Niederwenigern, later merged to Hattingen) is a German linguist, Caucasiologist, author, and professor for Comparative Linguistics at the Institute of Empirical Linguistics at the Goethe University of ...
, professor of Comparative Linguistics at the
University of Frankfurt am Main Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealt ...
, and others have published this palimpsest that contains also liturgical readings taken from the Gospel of John.


Legacy

The
Udi language The Udi language, spoken by the Udi people, is a member of the Lezgic branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family. It is believed an earlier form of it was the main language of Caucasian Albania, which stretched from south Dagestan to cur ...
, spoken by some 8,000 people, mostly in the
Republic of Azerbaijan A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th ...
but also in
Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...
and
Armenia Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''Ox ...
, is considered to be the last direct continuator of the Caucasian Albanian language.


Characters

The script consists of 52 characters, all of which can also represent numerals from 1 to 700,000 when a combining mark is added above, below, or both above and below them, described as similar to Coptic. 49 of the characters are found in the Sinai palimpsests. Several punctuation marks are also present, including a middle dot, a separating colon, an apostrophe, paragraph marks, and citation marks.


Letters


Unicode

The Caucasian Albanian alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in June, 2014 with the release of version 7.0. The Unicode block for Caucasian Albanian is U+10530–1056F:


References


External links

* Armazi project: *
Jost Gippert: ''The "Albanian" Alphabet as preserved in Armenian Tradition''
– has images of glyphs *

{{list of writing systems Alphabets Obsolete writing systems Udi language